Candidates lie, Senators lie

Posted by on

I heard Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) give the Republican weekly address today, and I was struck by one statement I know is a flat-out lie: that “the constantly-shifting regulatory environment recently forced a company to abandon seven years of work and $7 billion in investment.”

Well, no, Senator. Royal Dutch Shell abandoned its drilling plans because oil prices are so low it became uneconomic to continue. It had nothing to do with regulations.

“The decision by Shell to abandon its Arctic drilling program for now primarily reflects the realities of lower global oil prices,” said Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research, who advises oil companies and investment banks. “When prices go down, the oil industry shortens their list of projects in development by removing the most expensive ones.”

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Republican officeholders and candidates for office lie, of course. We just saw examples of that in the debate among the party’s 2016 Presidential candidates last Wednesday. Examples:

  • Donald Trump said he had never called Marco Rubio “Mark Zuckerberg’s favorite Senator.” That very statement is on Trump’s website.
  • Ben Carson said “it’s ‘total propaganda’ to suggest he had any connection to Mannatech, a maligned nutritional supplement company,” when he was paid to appear in promotional videos for the company.
  • Ted Cruz said women’s wages have dropped while President Obama has been in office, when in fact their median salary has gone up, according to the Census Bureau’s data.
  • Carly Fiorina (remember her? Big winner in debate #2, according to the press?) claimed 92 percent of all job losses during President Obama’s first term were women’s jobs. “The number of women with jobs increased by 416,000 during Obama’s first term,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. One of the two major political parties in the United States has candidates and officeholders who will brazenly lie to its citizens and apparently not worry overmuch about being caught out in said lies.